X to Add a “Dislike” Button for Replies You Don’t Like

How many times do you wish you could “dislike” an X (formerly Twitter) reply on a post, especially in these trying political times? Interestingly, there have been references recently to the development of a dislike button on X.

References to a Dislike (Downvote) Button Found

There’s no use pretending we all love everything we read on X. There are too many varied opinions on there, especially after Elon Musk bought Twitter and made many changes to it right off the bat. So why do we have to pretend by not having a dislike button?

It seems a dislike button may be yet another change that Musk is bringing to X. Engineer Aaron Perris posted to X a picture of what he saw in development. It includes images of a broken heart.

There is also a video of a dislike button in use posted by another X user. This trial of the button was only available on replies and not tweets, but it’s unknown whether that could change at some point.

Additionally, an X employee’s Threads account shared a video of a possible new way to expand replies, and the dislike button was seen in that as well. That post didn’t last long before it was replaced with a video that didn’t show the dislike button.

The Need for a Dislike Button

There isn’t necessarily a need for a dislike button on X, but there is a need to be able to express displeasure in some way. While Facebook doesn’t have a downvote button, it does have a variety of responses, including like, love, care, wow, sad, funny, and angry.

For instance, if someone is talking about someone dying, you don’t want to like it. You want to show love, care, or sadness. If someone mentions that they were fired from their job, you don’t want to give it an upvote, you want to express care, sadness, or anger.

Yet, with Twitter, all you can do is give it an upvote via the heart. There’s a definite need to show some type of displeasure with a post, but not necessarily a downvote. If you want to dislike something because it has sensitive content, instead, learn how to turn that type of content off.

It’s up to Musk and the others at X to let us know when we should expect to see the dislike button, as it’s definitely a reality, with at least three people seeing it. But if it doesn’t pass this test, maybe we’ll never see it.

Are you done with it all and just want to delete your X account? We can help. There are also some great X alternatives you may want to try.

Image credit: Unsplash

Laura Tucker - Contributor

Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site's sponsored review program.